A Trio of Interesting Ads

This first one is a great ad for Benjamin Moore Paint. Its a giant colour swatch that uses the blue sky as its colour pallet.











The second ad is for Mr Clean. I love this one. Its really simple, but very effective.


Third is an ad for Bic Razors. This one is great becasue it dosen't just use the billboard, but also the field in front of it as part of its design. The funny part is that someone has to mow the strip of grass in front of the sign each day!

Little Golden Book Monday #4

Today's Little Golden Book is "Tom and Jerry's Photo Finish" from 1974. Although most of my collection of Little Golden Books has been acquired as over the past few years as a collector, this one comes from my childhood. I remember how excited I was to own this book, as I could see Tom & Jerry any time I wanted, even when they were not on TV. Back then there were no cartoon networks, no cartoon DVD collections etc, so if you were a fan of a particular cartoon, you actualy had to get up early Saturday mornign to see them, or you had to have something like this great book. I must have read this story and looked at the photos a millions times over. Great cover and great drawings throughout.

Mr. Yuk Says... Happy St. Patrick's Day

Ok, I am a few days late with this one, but I wanted to share this anyway.
My last day at work before St. Patrick's Day, my coworkers were all going crazy with the St. Patrick's Day nonsense. They were all wearing their green, and hassling all those who were not dressed in green. This may make me a party pooper, but I have never been big on St. Patrick's Day. I don't like the colour green and I don't want to drink some goofy green beer... and I am NOT Irish!
As the morning wore on I was getting tired to all the taunting I was receiving for not wearing green. I quickly headed for my computer and after a few minutes on Google and then in Freehand, I had created my own St. Patrick's button to proudly wear for the day. Although a few of my coworkers were a little put off by my Mr. Yuk sticker, most though it was pretty funny, and a few even asked for their very own.

Little Golden Book Monday #3

Today's Little Golden Book is "Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse and the Missing Mouseketeers" from 1956 (my printing is from 1975). I was immediately drawn to the wonderful artwork on the cover of Mickey Mouse with his detective cap and magnifying glass.
The story takes place at Disneyland and has many wonderful drawings of Mickey and the gang at all the familiar spots in the park. I especially liked the opening paragraph "Disneyland was all agog. Main Street was hung with banners." Agog is a great word for a children's book don't you think?
And for any of you who are worried... Mickey dose find Minnie Mouse and the Mousketeers in the end!

Victoria Vanguard Jerseys

Today on the way home from work I was listening to the local sports radio station and they were talking about the Vancouver Canucks and their jerseys. Of course as soon as I heard them talking about jerseys and new possible logos, I became very interested. They mentioned a Canucks fan website where there was a discussion going on regarding next season's Canuck's jerseys, along with fan made designs. As soon as I got home, I hit the web and ended up wasting a couple of hours at the computer. First I checked out the Canucks Canucks.com message board where the thread topic was "Modified Canucks Jersey - New Designs". There were some terrific looking jersey designs posted by the Canucks fans. This got me thinking about a logo I made a few years ago for the Victoria Salmon Kings of the ECHL.
When I first heard that there was a new pro hockey team coming to Victoria a couple of seasons ago, I was very interested to see what their name and logo would be. I was greatly disappointed when they unveiled their name (Salmon Kings) and logo (a sappy looking fish with a crown). Not the cool name and logo I had been hoping for. I decided I wanted to come up with something cooler. I remembered seeing some proposed (but unused) logos for the new team in Adirondack (check out my previous blog on this. I took my favorite unused Adirondack's logo and then mucked with it in Photoshop, changing the Adirondack Attack into the Victoria Vanguard. After spending some time playing around with, I made a nice desktop out of it, which pops up every now and then in my desktop screensaver mode.
Today I decided it was time to create some jerseys for my fictional hockey team. So, here I present the home and away jerseys of the Victoria Vanguard.

Little Golden Book Monday #2

It's Monday, so here is another of the Little Golden Books from my collection. Today its Walt Disney Productions' Black Hole. Not wanting to get left out of the movie space race following the success of Star Wars, everyone wanted to get into the scifi business. Disney put together this live action movie which didn't set any box office records, but as a kid, I remember thinking this was such a cool movie! Maximillian was the coolest robot villian even... much cooler than those silly Stormtroopers from that other space movie.
After renting the DVD a few years back, I realized that this movie didn't really hold up all that well. I guess you had to be a 12 year old boy to really appreciate this movie. For those of you who can't get enough of this movie, you can purchase the soundtrack on the iTunes store.
Something else that I did not realize until I scanned the cover and had a look at it recently, it turns out this book was actually made for robots to enjoy, as the cover states "A spaceship Adventure for Robots". Who knew!?

Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends

I am so excited... Foster's Home for Imaginary Frinds, season 1 just came out on DVD. I had a bit of a hard time finding it, as none of usual places I buy DVDs had it in stock (they didn't even have any on order). I thoguht I would have have to order it online until I stumbled across a copy at WalMart.
If you have never heard of this cartoon, and you enjoy Saturday morning fare, then you have to check this one out! Although little kids will enjoy it, it has lots of humour for us older kids too! And the theme song is addictive!
Here is a description of the show from the back of the DVD "So what's a kid to do when they outgrow their imaginary friend? They find them a home at Foster's home for Imaginary Friends. Madame Foster's is the perfect place to abandon wayward imaginary friendds of all shapes and sizes. Liek Blooregard Q. Kazoo, the obnoxious wise-cracking uh... blue blob. Eudardo, the big, giant monster who's afraid of his own shadow. Wilt, the tallest imaginary friend you could ever imagine. And Coco. We're not really sure what Coco's deal is, but she is apperantly a bird of some sort. They've all taken up residence at Madame Foster's, and they place will never be the same again."
For less than $20 you can pick up this 2 disc set with all 13 first season episodes, plus commentary on a few episodes, a behind the scenes look, promos, end of episode gags, and more!

Congratulations New Westminster Whalers

On Sunday, March 5th, 2007, the New Westminster Whalers won the WHA Championship, beating the Lumby Fighting Saints All Stars 3 - 2 at home in front of a small but jubilant crowd inside the Queens Park Arena.

This was my son Kaden's second Championship winning game, as we watched the Coquitlam Express win the BCHL Championship last season. Pretty good for an (almost) 2 year old. Two years old, and two Cup winning games! I wonder who he will see win the Cup next season?

Little Golden Book Monday #1

After seeing a recent blog on the Secret Fun Spot about the back pages of Little Golden Books, I thought it might be fun to post the fronts of some of my Little Golden Books. After flipping though my stacks of LGBs, I realized how much I loved the covers (and inside artwork) of so many of them that I thought that it might be fun to start a Little Golden Book of the week post on my site.
So, starting today, I am posting the first (actually two) covers to some of my favorite LGBs. Today I present two books based on the Disney/Pixar movie Cars. The first is the Cars story book which came out just before the movie hit theaters. The second is a more recent release of "Mater and the Ghost Light". This one seems a little more scarce, as I have only seen one other copy, other than the one I purchased. This one is a retelling of the animated short on the Cars DVD release. Both were released in 2006.
I am not sure of the dates, but I know that around 2001 when Disney's Atlantis The Lost Empire was released, Little Golden Books for some reason stopped releasing Disney titles, which was disappointing for me, as I am a big fan of the Atlantis movie and was looking forward to adding an Atlantis title to my Little Golden Books collection. A few years later, LGBs and Disney seemed to renew their partnership, but unfortunately due to the lack of success of Atlantis, they never bothered to release an Atlantis book after the fact. Darn!

Corn Gone Wrong

Just a quick post today. This is an ad I scanned from a comic book back in 2000. The ad is for Corn Nuts, something I was never a big fan of, but this ad is great! I love the menacing looking ears of corn behind bars. I especially like the graffiti on the cell wall that says "Farmer Brown Shucks!" Nice tag line too... "Surprisingly hardcore corn snacks in seven mean flavors". Seeing as they seem to make animated cartoons out of just about everything these days, I would love to suggest a Saturday morning cartoon series based on these Corn Snacks from the wrong side of the tracks! Sounds like a winner to me.